


All Our Running Ahead

by althoughsolemn (Figure_of_Dismay)



Category: Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Gen, Gift Fic, M/M, Season/Series 08, Subtext, The Beginning, chm secret santa 2019, it's all subtext, summer 2006, the american special
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22332310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Figure_of_Dismay/pseuds/althoughsolemn
Summary: it’s late spring/early summer in 2006 and the boys are making the US special. It's a project with major highs and absurd lows, and somehow it made them all decide that they wanted many other adventures just like it. This is a quiet exploration of that. A secret santa fic for Pippinmctaggart. Gen with subtext or OT3-lite with a slight Ja/R leaning.
Relationships: Jeremy Clarkson & James May, Jeremy Clarkson & Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson/Richard Hammond/James May, Richard Hammond/James May
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	All Our Running Ahead

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has caveats. The first being, this is the first fic I’ve composed directly into the computer in a little over 2 years, since I didn’t have time to hand write it and procrastinate for months about typing it in, and that shift has been… something. The second being that I’ve never written Richard POV. Or really read much Ja/R fic before trying some in order to try and understand a direction for this fic. Here’s hoping I’ve come up with a palatable take that isn’t totally out of left field!  
> I really, honestly struggled a lot writing this, but I think parts of it came together well. Plus I do feel that I’ve started to understand the OT3 better after this…

*  
It was the beginning of summer in Miami and Richard wondered if it was possible to actually suffocate in the humidity. Trekking from lot to lot in the heat, revising his expectations ever downwards as the impossibility of their set budget sunk in had worn him out utterly before they’d even begun. Once they were on the road and getting up to ridiculous things, he’d bounce back and go on bouncing — there was nothing like the rush of it — but that first night in their American chain hotel he wasn’t in the mood for making much of a night of it. Or he was, because the air seemed to be made of glue and velvet and water and heat instead of breathable things like oxygen in Florida, and he felt they needed a bit of fun to help them acclimate, but he also knew that there were a lot of long days ahead. Also, Wilman had been perfectly clear, turning up for filming the next morning hung over was absolutely not allowed until at least the 3rd or 4th day.

Jeremy wasn’t about to let them off the hook that easily, though. He showed up at Richard’s door and badgered and cajoled until Richard came out with him to collect James. “We’ve got to get him to come out for a decent-ish meal at least. He’s been a sulky bastard since we set out, though of course he won’t tell anyone what’s bothering him this time, and he needs cheering up.”

“So your plan is to what, tell him he needs to perk up and feed him drinks until he does so?”

“Well… essentially, yes.”

“I happen to agree with you that he’s obviously in need of some sympathy, but I would like to remind you, Jeremy, that you can’t make somebody happier just by badgering them about it. And when you succeed at pissing him off even further, I’m going to remind you of this conversation and tell you I told you so.” Richard double checked he had his room key and joined him out in the hallway, anticipating an evening that had even odds between being delightful or a train wreck. “You know why he’s being a misery guts don’t you -- He and Woman, as he insists on referring to her, had some kind of argument.”

“Oh, the most argumentative man on the face of the planet has had an argument with a person close to him, what a surprise. I thought that was the kind of thing they actually enjoyed from time to time.”

“Yeah, well, it turns out that this was more the kind that wasn’t recreational. He hasn’t actually shared details, because, well, he’s James. Not that I want to get sucked into the opaque morass of his romantic life, of course.”

“Of course. And you’re not an eager little gossip, either, I’m sure,” said Jeremy, with a teasing lilt.

“Of course not,” he said, grinning, “But my point is that for once, he’s annoyed with more than us right now. Apparently he’s supposed to use this time to ‘think about his priorities.’ Not a direct quote because we were already… a number of pints and a long day of bike repair in before he wanted to talk about things, but that’s the gist. Thus the case of the mopes.”

“And he’s told you all that but not me.”

“Yes he has,” Richard said, knowing he was gloating just ever so slightly, “Because I am a good listener, and you are an insensitive clot who would try to dig every sordid detail out of him when he doesn’t really want to talk about it.” Richard knew he was bragging, just slightly, but then again it was a hint he needed to make. Jeremy wasn’t likely to hear it or heed it, but he felt duty bound to try. He tried even harder. “So please remember that I’m telling you this only so your curiosity is assuaged, not because he’ll want to talk about it.”

“Of course, Richard, I’m not an idiot,” said Jeremy with a note of greatly exaggerated wounded pride that did not exactly inspire confidence. 

This was proven correct when James opened the door to his room and Jeremy exclaimed in a sympathetic yet not at all unringing voice, “James! I hear that you are heartbroken, maligned, and in need of much cheering. We are here to bring you to the food and strong drink.”

James glared at Richard, knowing he was to blame, but Richard refused to be embarrassed. Whatever peculiarly fraught tensions were brewing between the two of them lately, Jeremy did care about him in his own offbeat and overzealous ways, and James was rotten at reaching out for help for himself. Richard had always felt it was ungracious not to let your friends be there for you when you knew that they could, and wanted to. 

“Yes, well, that’s not the opening salvo I would have chosen,” said Richard, “but that is, generally, the plan for this evening. Don’t even think about saying no, James.”

Miraculously, he didn’t. In fact, he even looked pleased.

*  
The highways were dull and congested, sprawling and convoluted enough that a lot of energy had to be put into keeping the group together and going in the right direction. That alone was distracting enough to keep away any fractiousness between filming. 

The more rural areas were novel. Sunsoaked, and alien, not like the dry heat of Italy, and certainly like nothing England had to offer. It seemed to alternate between barren seeming stretches with ditches of dry grass, and swampy, verdant places in quite literal southern gothic density, and quaint farming towns of low, boxy buildings and spindly cross topped churches they meandered past.

As they spent their first full day on the road, everyone’s mood improved, as did James’s specifically. Richard had inquired privately, in a quiet moment, after the state of his mood. And if he’d called home to set things to rights. James had said obliquely that he wasn’t too worried, and that Richard shouldn’t worry either. It was just that it was a crossroads. “It’s a transitional phase,” he’d said, “And I don’t transition well. We have some decisions to make, the two of us, and she wants me to know what I want before we do.”

“That does actually sound like a reasonable thing to ask. Do you know what you want?”

“Sometimes I think I do, but sometimes I think that’s just what I think I’m supposed to want, and then I’m not sure.”

“Now, see,” Richard had said, “I’ve never had that problem. I just want things, and then I work like hell to make it happen, if I can. I don’t tend to think about should or shouldn’t until well after the fact, which,” he’d grinned, “Sometimes turns out to be a bit of a mistake. But I don’t usually regret it. Mostly.”

Jeremy had come over then and James had turned to him and claimed that Richard was trying to give him dubious life advice, and the whole thing had turned into an argument over which of the three of them was least able and trustworthy at giving advice outside of the vehicular -- and even that could be dubious. Richard was glad, though, that it wasn’t a serious bout of angst that James was suffering. And he knew what James meant about a crossroads. It had felt for a while now like a moment of transition was starting to gather around all of their lives, with the steady rise in success of the show and all the opportunities for additional projects that opened up. How, in turn, that tested and pulled at the internal dynamic they’d already built. He was hoping this US trip would shake it all back out again.

*

They had a lot of downtime while Jeremy and the crew wrangled the cow gag, and the fire. The campsite was nice, lush and well maintained without being manicured, and more civilized than was being shown on camera. There were bathroom facilities, some electricity, some cookout facilities that none of them were foolhardy enough to use. They were a large, hardworking group and absolutely roughing it in some southern backwoods was not something any of them had signed up for at that point in time. It was rustic though, and far from any of the cities they’d passed, so it was quiet aside from the sounds of nature and their own team bustling. 

The heat was a little better than it had been the past two days, and though it was still humid beyond anything England could produce, here, away from the road, it was fresher, the air scented with crushed green things and the sweetness of dry grasses. He was starting to get used to living with a fine sheen of fresh sweat on his skin, clean and honest. He’d never really minded the heat, baking and loosening his muscles, and giving him a zenlike sense of purpose. 

It was a bit like a bizarre, through the looking glass version of the kind of boy’s own adventures with friends and bravery that he’d loved to imagine as a child. Only with more cameras. And madness. And roadkill. And baffled and baffling Americans. This was the kind of adventure he’d always half wanted and yet never pictured for himself. It was in some aspects so absurd, so far outside the bounds of everyday life, that he couldn’t quite believe they were doing it. He remembered the brief but straight faced and genuinely meant discussion between Jeremy, James and Andy over whether or not a whole ex cow on the roof of a Camero was in line with the joke or a step too tasteless with a fresh sense of the surreal and laughed to himself.

James, who had settled beside him in the grass in the shade of the truck when the cameras were off, looked over curiously. “Care to share the joke, Hammond?”

“Sorry, it’s just, I had one of those moments where you look at where you are and what you’re doing. Can you believe it?” he said, laughing again, filled up with joy and disbelief, “Can you believe that this is our job?”

“Do you know, sometimes I can’t,” agreed James, though without nearly so much delight. 

He recognized the wry, longsuffering James voice. Richard leaned over and gave him a cajoling nudge on hearing it, knowing that such gestures were actually fully within bound -- from the right people -- on occasions when James wasn’t currently terrified out of his wits. James gave him another tolerant glance and a sigh for his troubles.

“Come on, mate, it’s fun isn’t it? I thought we bullied you out of your bad mood. Still brooding on troubles back home?”

“Oh, I suppose I’m not, actually. None of that seems terribly real or immediately to do with me while we’re out here doing this. Which likely means that she had a point, a bit. But I seem to have put off worrying about regular life until I’m back there, in it.”

“So you really are sitting here worrying about if we’re being too ridiculous? Only you, James.” He said it fondly but also with real exasperation.

“Not really,” James said, consideringly, “I mean, you know I’m a good sport.”

“Well…”

“Compared to you two.”

“That’s fair.”

“And it’s not like I’m really Captain Stodgy or am afraid to be silly, or look foolish. I know I’m not supposed to say this out loud where people can hear, but I love it as much as you do, honestly. It’s just the way Jeremy gets about hearing objections. Or not hearing them as the case may be.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that. Sometimes I wonder if his ears are really hooked up right to the thinking part of his brain.”

“It’s not even that I had serious objections, which I don’t, it’s that face he makes. That ‘oh god, it’s boring James again,’ face.”

“Aw, James. You can’t think that. I know he doesn’t think you’re boring,” Richard protested. Then he thought back over what James had said and laughed, startled into realizing all over again the sheer idiocy of the ongoing wrangle between his two friends. He couldn’t believe that he was so often surprised at the fact that he was left to play mediator so much of the time. “But listen, observe with me the utter ridiculousness here. You go and argue with the big ape for the sake of pedantical-ness, and I’m assuming partly just to annoy him, and then he gets annoyed, and then you get annoyed that he got annoyed. Surely you can see the obvious flaws here.”

There was a long, thoughtful pause while James inspected inwardly with grudging concentration -- all serious blue eyes and boyish frown, how did that man believe himself so opaque when his inner puzzlings and emotions marched, transparent as glass, across his face. Then glanced up at Richard from the corner of his eye and smiled sheepishly. 

“That does follow a kind of logic,” he admitted, “I’m such an arse, aren’t I.”

“You are, mate. But no more of one than we deserve,” Richard said, fond and relieved. “I just get fed up with watching the two of you get locked into these contests of who can out stubborn each other. Not that I labour under any idea that you’re going to stop even if you know you’re doing it.”

“I’m glad you realize that, Richard,” said James, with an odd kind of pride. Richard had always appreciated the way the man delighted in his own oddity. It was peaceable to be around. ”Anyway,” said James, like he was admitting a secret, “I like arguing.”

“Yes, James, I am aware of that.” He nudged James’s shoulder again and stretched his legs out in front of him. A small waft of breeze came through, cooling his damp skin. “I wonder where else we could get the BBC to send us to be entertainingly rubbish,” he said dreamily, “This could be a regular thing. Busman’s holidays in odd corners of the world.”

“I propose somewhere with less humidity next time. And less tenting.”

“I don’t mind the tenting, really. Especially when we’ve got hard working crew members going on a dinner run so I don’t even have to do any cooking out.”

“Well, that’s a blessing. I don’t think anyone thought to pack any Heinz tins,” said James with a pout of faux regret, and then grinned.

Richard tore off a handful of grass and then flung the blades at him in retaliation, laughing. They turned into such children when they spent their days together. It made him feel buoyant, made the world feel both vivid and tame, as though they could stride across it with ease, shoulder to shoulder. 

“You’re feeling better, then?” he asked, part goading and part sincere.

“I feel hungry,” said James placidly, “But yes. It is a good job, isn’t it. Peculiar but good.”

“Hmm. That could be our alternate catch phrase, ambitious but rubbish and peculiar but good.”

There was a commotion nearby, Jeremy had radioed that he was on his way back with his ‘find’ so the cameras were coming back out to frame up the shot. It was time to go back to work. And oh what work it was.

*

That night at the camp was idyllic, in a smokey, sweaty, and faintly sunburned sort of way. It cooled enough to be bearable, the humidity of the day dropping into heavy, sticky dew. The dinner run was successful, a couple of runners bringing back cow in the more traditional format of burgers from a local diner, greasy but good, and filling enough to make a band of men who’d lived off petrol station crisps and sodas all day happily satisfied. They’d also managed to bring back convenience store beer, weak and american but cold and wet, which they fell to with a real thirst.

The campfire burned long into the night, not ferociously but merrily crackling. The smoke kept the worst of the mosquitos away, and lit their faces in orange and gold, shadowed and familiar-strange. The smell of it clung to his clothes and hair in that nostalgic campfire way. There were various retellings of the day narrated, gripes and jokes, tales of the baffling roadside signage and attractions they’d passed, recounting surreal religious threats and oddly juxtaposed advertisements. The frogs in the distant woods around them chorused fervently as true dusk fell. Jeremy worked up one of his raucous litanies of complaints, exaggerated and somehow cheering, until Andy told him off with fond exasperation, telling him that he hadn’t even had to put up his own tent or cook his own tea so he could still bloody well be grateful. 

As the crowd thinned, the crew starting to troop off to the ungracious hospitality of sleeping bag and tent, Richard found that he and James had gravitated together. They sat shoulder to shoulder just outside the penumbra of the fire, which had burned low and was going dim. The ground was hard but the grass was long and dense, easing it, and cool with dew under his fingertips. He leaned back, braced on his hands. The stars were sharp and unfamiliar overhead. 

“Bet you don’t get a lot of those fellows back in Hammersmith,” he said to James, nodding upwards at the great vista of night, lit by drifts of bright points he couldn’t name.

“No. None at all really. But then, I have a nice soft bed in Hammersmith, instead of a nylon sack so I think it all evens out.” 

“You are such a city boy. Well, I don’t mind. Camping’s alright, really.” It was more than alright, really, he thought, it was pretty fantastic. He was lethargic and sun-warmed, sitting with his cohorts, his comrades in arms, and without any real danger, staring out into the thrilling illusion of the primitive dark. Soon, he would climb into his clammy sleeping bag and face the reality of a night on the ground after a long day of driving, but that was a hard reality yet to come and he didn’t think about it.

“You just think that because you’re young and made of bouncy things,” said James easily, smiling in the dark, “Though I’ll admit the view is fairly wonderful. You know that thing we’re not going to talk about… where I’m meant to contemplate my priorities… well. This, I think, nights like this one’s been are a priority. They have to be. There’s nothing quite like it.”

Richard didn’t react, knowing that James shared with him, sometimes, things like this because he know that Richard wouldn’t embarrass him with an excess of emotion. But he was honored by the confidence. Glad to know that he wasn’t the only one who could see how sweet and vital it all was, despite also being exhausting and tedious and out of their comfort zones.

“That’s surprisingly sentimental from you, James,” he said, gently teasing, “But I have to say I agree.”

*  
He’d never been more terrified than when he first heard the sound of a viciously thrown rock hit the side of one of the cars. It was so incongruous, in an otherwise unremarkable petrol station in the middle of nowhere. Their hostility was so palpably real, it made his skin prickle.

And then the locals tore out, full of rage, to get reinforcements, and that was worse.

And then James’s stupid, elderly car wouldn’t start. Then Richard realized that he wasn’t right behind him peeling out, and that was worse still. He stopped, got out, didn’t think. He shouted for the their camera cars to leave them behind, just get on the road.

James’s face was dead white, stricken. His voice shook. Richard was amazed that his didn’t shake as he connected the leads. In his stomach was a sick ball of terror and rage. How dare they do this to us, how dare they. How dare they. And especially not to James. It couldn’t be happening. They had to get out of there. 

He checked compulsively for the cadillac behind him in the rear view mirror all the way out of town.

*

In between and after coaching Jeremy and his wiper-less Camaro on staying between the lines on the highway, Richard kept checking in with James. His responses over the radio were terse and muted, which worried Richard. James liked a good complain almost as much as Jeremy did when things went wrong, and if he’d gone quiet and withdrawn that often meant that he was truly upset or unsettled.

He had reason to be upset. Richard was still seething internally over it. He’d liked the idea of the joke. Paint harmlessly outrageous but generally unobjectionable things on their cars and make some rednecks look a bit ridiculous and backwards if they jumped for the bait. Maybe it was a bit of playground taunting, but they’d only prove the southern hick stereotype if they got mad. He’d pictured that anger as cartoonish and harmless, like the annoyed and hyperbolic complaints they got in the post back home. No one could have guessed that these Alabamans could be so extreme, so tribal and violent.

It was no surprise that it took James longer to shake off the shock. Richard made no secret of the fact that he didn’t shy away from confrontation. He liked the thrill of it, sometimes, though less so when it involved the threat of guns and blunt objects. It made him feel brilliantly alive -- which he felt now, in between bouts of worry and disbelief. But James was a different sort of man, gentle at heart, and though he could be cantankerous, he had no instinct to violence or self defence. It brought out all of Richard’s protective instincts. The sky was finally starting to lighten ahead of them, the steady roar of the downpour lessening to a friendlier sort of patter. The air felt clearer, too, the choking electricity of the storm had eased and the sticky humidity had started to wash away. 

“You doing alright back there, James?” he radioed, trusting that Jeremy could manage for a couple minutes. 

“Yes. I’m alright. Still here,” said James. It was not that easy to read tone over the staticky crackle, but Richard thought he sounded better. “Not quite keeping up but not quite falling behind.”

“You can still see the camera car though, right?” he asked, just to make sure.

“Yes. I have no intention of getting lost tonight of all nights.”

“You never actually intend to get lost, mate. But I’m glad.”

“Hammond,” he began tentatively, and then there was a pause on the line. “You don’t think we went too far, do you?”

“No. No I don’t. It’s not like we covered our cars with slurs or threats or anything. And even if we had, it’s not like that was grounds for attempted assault.”

“They’re going to say we asked for it,” said James tiredly.

“But we didn’t,” said Richard, insistent, “We were there making our show, cocking about, not trying to start a turf war or whatever they took that as.”

“Right. You’re right. All we wanted was to be professionally rubbish on camera.”

Richard laughed, relieved. James was getting it now, shaking it off. “Exactly. And we are definitely professionally rubbish. How’s the caddy holding up?”

“Hanging on. Listen,” said James, sounding sincere even on the tinny speaker, “Probably we won’t ever talk about this bit again, because we’re men and we’re british, but thank you for staying behind to help back there. I know that’s not what we normally do, but it was important.”

“Oh, mate, don’t go all wet on me,” he joked, “No, no, of course, I stayed. You and me ‘ve got to stick together. You know that, right, James?” 

There was another pause. Richard breathed deep, tasting the fresh summer rain on his tongue despite the lingering taint of stale truck cabin. He meant more than on the road, but the show, too, and it’s own little atmosphere. Meant the growing sense of them against the world.

“Yes. Yes, I do know, Hammond.”

He checked the road ahead and switched channels to warn Jeremy he was drifting right again with a renewed sense of calm.

*

“What I especially like was the way, when that mad lady confronted you at the gas station, you said absolutely nothing.”

“And what I like was the way, when my Cadillac yet again failed to start, you set out without checking to be sure Richard and I were following you, despite knowing the state of my battery.”

“Oh come on, James, which would you prefer, me uselessly hovering over your ailing american boat, getting in the way, or me getting our caravan on the road?”

“You could have at least checked!”

“Yes, well, I’m sorry, James, but I was distracted by the multitude of rocks flying at my head.” 

They’d made their overnight halt across the border, and despite the fact that they had another morning of driving before rolling into New Orleans, they’d decamped to the nearest decent bar they could find with the earnest intent of getting thoroughly pissed. After running for very likely their actual lives, and then weathering that thundering monsoon on their way out of state, it was well earned.

Their crew had settled in and taken over at least half the bar and were now well ensconced. Richard pitied the waitstaff in having to deal with them all in that kind of mood, riding high on spent adrenaline and manic exhaustion. Then again he was sure that Jeremy would make sure they tipped exorbitantly well.

He and James and Jeremy had settled in a booth in a corner, out of the way of the main din. They’d started with dinner, and then drinks, and had now settled in to the devolving into a petty argument portion of the evening. Richard’s world was already verging on pleasantly hazy so he was less than clear on whether this was the usual kind of argument for sport that his mates enjoyed or if it was the more stinging sort that had started to creep in the last several months. The kind sparked by mutual insecurities and spent patience, leaving Richard to play go between -- or sometimes to put up his hands in disgust and try to pick up the pieces later when James rung to vent about it. 

He had more and more respect for Andy when they got that way, for wrangling Jeremy and all of them so adroitly. God knew Richard got fed up with them sometimes. And other times he felt like he was trying to covertly parent, or redirect them. Richard often found himself thinking, with helpless protectiveness, that James and Jeremy both needed saving from themselves. Either that, or their heads knocking together. Maybe both.

“I did drive behind you to shield you for dozens of miles,” Jeremy was saying, insisting, not quite shouting but his voice ringing, “Those idiot hicks would have had to shoot through me. That should earn me some credit, James.”

“But then you sped off ahead like a lead footed maniac and left me to the tender mercies of those very same idiot hicks!”

“You were crawling along at a snails pace. I snapped, alright? I simply couldn’t take it anymore. And anyway, if they were really going to attack us or run us off the road or whatever it was they’d planned, they’d have done it right away, not forty fucking minutes later.”

This, Richard decided, coupled with the energy in the air, that still wavered between triumph and unease, had the potential to turn spiteful. “Enough!” he said, interrupting and leaning forward from his slouching in the middle of the booth so that they couldn’t argue across him anymore. “That is quite fucking enough from both of you today. James,” he said, pointing at the man in question around his glass and checking to be sure he had his attention, “I would like you to remember that Jeremy is, deep down, a coward and he was very brave to try and protect you, and I’m sure he had some blind terror to work off. He was also summarily punished by having to drive blind in that storm. And we really didn’t need to be tripping over him while getting underway.”

“That’s true,” said James, grudgingly. “You wouldn’t get me to make a drive like that for any money. That’s something.”

Jeremy made a noise of primly wounded pride. “Magnanimous of you,” he said moodily, but didn’t object to the characterization.

“And you Jeremy,” he said, turning to face him instead, “I would like you to remember that for once it wasn’t James’s fault that he had to go so slowly and held us up. And also, like I told James earlier, it wasn’t your fault. It was juvenile humour, of course it was, but it wasn’t reasonable provocation.”

Richard could see the spark of relief in Jeremy’s face when he realized that they didn’t blame him for it, and knew that he’d hit on the real worry driving him. 

“He has a point, Jezza,” James agreed, seeming to realize it as well. Richard can hear the reasonable compassion in his voice. “There was no way to know that the natives would actually turn violent. No one in their right mind would assume that while travelling freely through a supposedly first world nation.”

“I’m beginning to suspect that the American South isn’t one of those,” said Jeremy, looking pleased and annoyed both at once. He had his casual pub grumbling voice on.

Richard relaxed back again, shoulder blades and shirt creaking against worn vinyl. The serious row was successfully headed off, proved useless and unwanted, and now they could settle in for a good, companionable moan about their lot in life. Their simultaneously charmed and cursed lot, right in the center of a vortex of chaos unlike anything he’d known before he’d met Jeremy and James.

Absurdity and disbelief overtook him again. “Can you believe,” he said, half laughing, with a mix of outrage and pride, “That we were the victims of a semi-serious attempted stoning, in America, in the year 2006, and not, I don’t know, Mesopotamia in the year 1200. It’s just so, just so… I don’t even have a word for it.”

“Stupid,” suggested James, with feeling.

“Vegetable-bred, corn-addled and moronic,” said Jeremy decisively.

“It could only have happened to us, you know,” said Richard, with wry wonder, “Only and specifically us, with our luck. I’m not ashamed to say that at the time, I was scared shitless. But now, I don’t know. It seems so ridiculous. Impossible. Maybe we were more scared than we needed to be and maybe we weren’t, but what a thing. What an experience.”

“I’ve never run for the border before,” said James with a sardonic kind of boyish excitement, “Now that I think of it, I believe that’s actually an accomplishment. Something to be proud of.”

“This will pass into lore, you know,” said Jeremy, “A Top Gear legendary moment, you wait and see.”

Jeremy was bragging and being hyperbolic, but the thing was, Richard didn’t actually think he was wrong. This was their first trip farther than Europe, and their first trip longer than the weekend jaunts for the epic races, but he was absolutely sure it wouldn’t be the last. Despite the exhaustion and the fairly serious glitches, it had that kind of feeling. It would all make good telly, and the viewers would want more. The three of them would want more, whatever the BBC would see fit to allow. More of the effort, more of the terror, more of the surreal and sublime. More of him with Jeremy and James, leaving the real world behind. 

He looked from one to the other, from his place between them. They were familiar, rumpled, pinked with sun, unlovely but dear. They annoyed him to pieces sometimes, both together and individually, but that’s the way it should be with real mates. To be able to fight as well as you could laugh.

He loves them, he realized with a blood rush of clarity, he utterly, utterly loves them, marvelous James and ridiculous Jeremy. Such things could not be said, or course, not and be taken as they are meant, with purest heart and strongest faith, without innuendo or greed. 

Or at least they could not be said between such prickly, English men. Of which he was one himself, he didn't imagine away his own awkward spines. But that was part of why they three fit together so well, along with everything else, the defensive barbs were all mutually understood. And maybe the other thing, too, was in fact tacitly known. Maybe not just Richard, but the other two, too, had realized, in whatever way they could say it to themselves. Maybe the saying didn’t matter, really, so long as they knew. 

So long as they could go out together into the wide earth full of strange things, and have fun, and almost die, and sit down afterwards, to eat drink and be merry, not chastened or full of blame. And think, I'm glad I was with you, and; isn't it good we did that together, and; yes, this, this is what we're really for. 

Jeremy, many years, and many adventures later would say in many interviews that it was a different thing that bonded them together. The thing which lay nestled in his missing year and which he'd had to describe and exorcize and overcome. 

Richard's perspective was a little different, though. He thought, he knew it was this, the days like this. The real joy and real fear, and the instinctive loyalty it had grown. The long road, the long hours, the manic glee, and the slow winding down, seeing each other in every kind of state and mood. Not the first step but maybe the most solidifying step towards their community of three, their unified front. All boys together on hot summer days.


End file.
